9.23.2005

Wonderfalls

I really have to compliment the USPS for their quick delivery of my DVDs. I placed the order on Monday with Amazon.com, and it shipped on Tuesday via USPS with an expected delivery of 3-5 business days. The projected delivery date according to Amazon.com was September 26th. Well, they arrived yesterday, in just two days.

"Wonderfalls" is a three-disc set which includes all thirteen episodes, including nine which were shot but never aired on Fox. There are also documentaries as well as commentary tracks on some of the episodes. I watched Disc 1 yesterday afternoon, which was the first four episodes, the ones that actually aired before the show was cancelled. After watching them, I had to wonder: What was the network thinking? If they'd put this show in a decent time slot and left it there, they could have had a hit on their hands. Instead, it was off to Canadian TV and then to DVD and the Logo Channel.

Would you like it? Perhaps. If you liked "Twin Peaks" or "Northern Exposure," which were a couple of my favorite television shows, then you probably would. "Wonderfalls" has a delightfully quirky cast as well as an interesting premise: Jaye, an Ivy Leaguer with a philosophy degree, is a slacker who works in a kitschy gift shop in Niagara Falls and lives in a trailer park. One day, a wax lion figurine in the gift shop starts talking to her, and soon other similarly inanimate creatures start doing the same. They tell her to do various outrageous things, but in the end, her actions change people's lives for the better.

Jaye is a very complicated woman, if not always a likeable person(much like Joel Fleischmann was in "Northern Exposure"). The show is cleverly written, and there have been some lines that had me howling with laughter. There's also the sexual tension of Jaye's growing relationship with Eric, the bartender at "The Barrel," a local bar, who came to Niagara Falls with his wife on his honeymoon a few days earlier, then found her fooling around with the bellboy in their hotel room. Heartbroken, he left her and started drinking and crying at the bar until they hired him. Jaye's best friend, Mahandra, waits tables at the bar as well.

I haven't watched the whole series yet, but so far, so good. And so, I'll finish this post and pop the next disc into the DVD player.